Trump Backs Voluntary AI Safety Audits as 20 Tech Companies Sign White House Agreement

As AI security incidents escalate and OpenAI halts training and pauses releases, President Donald Trump continues to argue that self-regulation is the best way for the artificial intelligence industry to address emerging risks associated with frontier AI.

On Tuesday, 20 technology companies agreed to voluntarily implement controls recommended by the White House. The companies committed to undergoing independent safety audits to determine whether their internal controls, monitoring systems and detection processes are working effectively.

The external reviews will focus on “risks related to cybersecurity, biosecurity, chemical threats, and unintended behavior by AI models.”

The companies also agreed to meet regularly to share best practices and establish common AI safety standards and benchmarks. Signatories include Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Alphabet/Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

White House AI agreement creates no new legal requirements

The agreement does not create new legal requirements for participating companies. Anthropic, Google and OpenAI are already conducting external audits, The Information reported.

Many companies have also volunteered to participate in confidential government safety testing. In addition to those tests, Trump argued that Tuesday’s agreement addresses emerging AI risks and is “morally binding,” despite having no legal force, Bloomberg reported.

“In some ways, it’s almost like the Constitution,” Trump told reporters at the White House after lunch with technology company leaders. “The biggest names in the world signed it, and I signed it as president. It’s really a form of protection.”

Near the end of the agreement, the companies state that “it may be reasonable to codify” the recommendations in the future. For now, however, Trump emphasized that America’s best possible AI future requires trusting AI companies to regulate themselves.

Big Tech companies embrace self-regulation and ‘SI’

Few details have been released about how the new safety audits will operate. Trump has posted only a summary of the agreement on Truth Social.

It also remains unclear whom the president will appoint to audit frontier models. Bloomberg reported that Trump appears to be politicizing the selection process, while some AI companies are uncertain about what qualifies as an independent third party for testing frontier AI systems.

Some progress has been made in identifying potential auditors. Bloomberg reported that “some of the companies ready to conduct such reviews have already met with the Center for AI Standards and Innovation, a U.S. agency that conducts voluntary government pre-deployment safety testing.”